Creating my own distribution

[rennurb3000]

Hello Folks!
I have got a leading role in a small group of young people dedicated to bring
DIY Art, Culture and Music to the People arround us.
This year we are celebrating our fourth anniversary and our third summer festival.
Since i like open source software and this Operation System as much as kicking windows out
of somebodys Computer i am thinking of creating a Live DVD for our guests (100-200People)
with Linux Mint remasterd containing fresh repositorys for all my important software,
reaching from digital art and music to engineering.
Also with preinstalled software and our artwork.
I know that this was possible with remaster sys, but this project is dicontinued...
I already searched the net, but i did not find any good guidlines...

Here are my questions:

1)I am a little bit concerned about legal stuff. I guess i cant name it like "Linux mint DIY remaster" or "DIY-Linux"...etc
Also i don't know what to do with the art provided by Linux mint .. Should i leave it? Or should i remove it?
If so, how can i remove the logos, names from the boot screen?
What should be removed?
2)What are the recommended tools to create my distribution?
Is Linux Mint a good starting point?

King Regards, Tom Turbo

[xenopeek]

Moved from installation & boot to here. Customized Mint ISOs for personal use are fine. If you want to share your customization with others, whether for free or for purchase, you'll have to rename it (Linux Mint name is trademarked, we don't want users to confuse your customization with a Linux Mint supported release); remove all Mint artwork, branding, and other identity elements (logo and branded artwork is copyrighted); and you can't confuse your intended users about the customization being associated in any way with Mint (your ISO didn't pass Linux Mint's QA process, so no seal of approval ).

It's not a trivial to build your own distro, but here are some pointers from two years back to get started on what you need to remove/replace:

Packages like mint-artwork-*, grub2-theme-mint, mint-backgrounds-* and mint-mdm-themes are packages that include artwork and other material with Mint branding, and these kind of packages must not be included if you create a Mint based distro. If you take one of the Mint ISOs as a base (not possible in your case I think, but generally) you will also have to edit some files in /etc to remove the Mint name (like issue, issue.net, lsb-release and motd).

See also this recent topic for other suggestions: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=195583

All that said, we're happy that you are considering to use Linux Mint for this! It sounds exciting whichever distro you build on

[rennurb3000]

thanks for the quick answer
i searched the whole net, but skipped this entry (which was made quite recently
i think i start with a minimal ubuntu system and try do add the cinnamon desktop to it.

[jimallyn]

Last I checked, Remastersys was still available for download, and I have been told that it works on Mint 17, although I haven't tried it myself.

[jimallyn]

Yep, still there:

http://geekconnection.org/remastersys/u ... ol/main/r/

[Derek_S]

Hello rennurb3000 - If you're truly interested in creating a Linux distro you can call your own, maybe you should look into this:

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

[richyrich]

Or this - http://www.os-builder.com/

[xenopeek]

i think i start with a minimal ubuntu system and try do add the cinnamon desktop to it.

The same as I shared about Linux Mint goes for Ubuntu; it's name is trademarked and portions are copyrighted. If you want to distribute a customized Ubuntu ISO you'll have to go through similar steps I think to rename and rebrand it. Or get approval to use their name and brand.

[rennurb3000]

Well now i think its a little bit too much effort for around 10-20 live cds
not for the technical part, but for the legal stuff
i guess sharing free copies of linux mint with a link to a shell script, which installs ppas and artwork would also be not
possible cause there is already a cd shop -.-
starting with linux from scratch would also be quite some work i guess

Is there some information material available (flyers, stickers,etc...)??
I know, that 5€ for a live cd is not much, but we are a very small group and we live absolutely non-profit like

[xenopeek]

It's fine to share copies of the official Linux Mint ISOs. They are free of charge; you can redistribute the unmodified ISOs freely (on DVD, USB thumb drive, or as ISO download). The store (http://www.linuxmint.com/store.php) is realised with partners of Linux Mint; buying a DVD or USB thumb drive with Linux Mint from there helps support the Linux Mint developers. It's also a convenience for users for whom downloading an ISO is not an option (limited bandwidth or download limits).

The problem is if you modify a Linux Mint ISO and it's still called "Linux Mint". Once it leaves your hands its out of your control; somebody may upload an ISO of the DVD and suddenly there is this "Linux Mint" out there with your customizations but not having passed Linux Mint's QA process. Any bugs you or the PPAs you add introduce would reflect on Linux Mint and frustrated users would seek out the official Linux Mint support channels, while we know nothing of the customizations done.

Over the years this has happened a few times and it's not pleasant when users spew their frustrations here for something not created by us. This happened even with renamed and rebranded derivatives like Commodore OS and MintPPC—both of which are long unsupported. Frustrated users come to our forums to rant about lack of support while it's completely out of our hands what the Commodore OS and MintPPC creators did and how they support their users.

In short, you're welcomed to hand out free DVDs of the official Linux Mint releases Tacking a note on there on how to download a file that customizes Linux Mint is also fine.